CBI closes cases against Adani

New Delhi: Preliminary inquiry against Adani Enterprise Ltd for allegedly inflating the value of raw materials and equipment imported for power projects in India, was closed, Delhi High Court was informed on Tuesday. The Court had last month sought to know the status of the CBI case, when a public interest litigation came up for hearing. The PIL petitioners had demanded a special investigation team to conduct enquiry about the allegation.

The agency cited the technical reason that the project being investigated was under the Maharashtra government's jurisdiction, and so it could not pursue the case. However, the counsels representing the petitioners, Common Cause and Centre for Public Interest Litigation countered that this technical objection was not valid as per the Delhi Police Act.

The CBI has not gone into the merits of the Enforcement Directorate's complaint against Adanis. ED had imposed a fine of Rs 5,500 crore in 2014, a little before Modi government took office, but all the facts regarding the case were kept confidential. Hence the petitioners' request to know the status of the enquiry. CBI now informed the court that it closed the investigation on July 15, 2015.

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) had alleged that Adani's companies imported energy equipment from China and Korea which cost Rs 3,580 but had obtained a bank loan of Rs 9,045 crore with inflated invoices.

As follow up CBI conducted a preliminary enquiry. From the enquiry conducted by the Customs Intelligence, it turned out that the difference between the inflated bill and the actual price was. Rs 5,468 crore which DRI alleged was siphoned off by the UAE-based Electron Infra. DRI also found out that the UAE firm was owned by a Mauritius-based trust led by Gautam Adani's brother Vinod Adani.

The Adani firm was accused of availing the banks' credit facilities for purchasing equipment from South Korea and China. Maharashtra Eastern Grid Power Transmission Company Limited and public sector banks such as State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and Vijaya Bank were also accused in the case.

The CBI had then explained, after a preliminary explanation that it had to investigate whether the banks were complicit in overvaluing the items for drawing excess advance from the banks.